She discussed these points in creating an effective grading rubric, and provided an example of the grading rubric she uses. Here is her methodology for creating grading rubrics:

create the assignment

work through the assignment, highlighting the points you expect your students to make. As you do so, start creating the rubric.

work through the assignment again, looking for anything you could have missed the first time. Edit the rubric further to include missing material.

share the rubric with as many colleagues as possible and ask them to work through the assignment as well. This review by others will improve your assignment and the grading rubric.

Be open to making changes to the rubric during the grading process if you find that the students have discovered a different way of analyzing the process.

She said that it was critical to involve all of the players in making the rubric, both professors and students. With proper use, grading rubrics are a win-win situation.

Chris Rollins of St. Louis University was the third speaker of this morning program. She spoke on "Effective and Efficient Electronic Commenting." She discussed creating a "vocabulary of grading" for common global comments, which can then be narrowed to the particular assignment and the particular student's paper.

She uses electronic bubble comments and also uses colors to mark certain categories of errors:

citation errors are marked in yellow

grammar errors are marked in blue

green is the color she uses to comment on sentence

red is her color choice when students reach a conclusion before analyzing the paper.

She prints out these graded papers on a color printer and returns them to her students. (If you have a student who is color blind, use different fonts such as bold, underline, or italics.) She also includes comments to indicate to students their level of achievement in the particular assignment.